Sure, French cinema had its dawn, and countries like Turkey, Iran and Russia are bursting with great filmmakers, but Hollywood is the only place balancing the blockbuster and the independent, the mainstream and the art house.

So it is a shame to see that the year's best movies have not been done justice.

From David Gordon Green's superb Boston marathon movie Stronger, to Darren Aronofsky's bold and beautiful Mother!, there is a long list of fantastic works which have flown under the HFPA's radar.

And even those which made the cut, ended up beaten by weaker, flawed competitors.

Image:Jake Gyllenhaal should have been nominated for Stronger

Martin McDonagh's Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is a great example of a classic awards misfire.

It fools you into believing it is well written and well directed. But it is loud, political, over-wrought and terribly unfunny.

It also looks like it is being acted on stage rather than on screen. This is mostly thanks to McDonagh, who started off as a playwright and never really got the difference in tone.

Still, it beat Steven Spielberg's modern classic The Post for best drama - a category which also inexplicably ignored Paul Thomas Anderson's Phantom Thread or Noah Baumbach's The Meyerowitz Stories.

Image:The Meyerowitz Stories is among those films snubbed

The same happened with Gary Oldman, whose performance as Winston Churchill got him the male gong.

Oldman is a terrific actor, but one whose talent and charisma are better suited elsewhere.

His Churchill tries too hard, requires too much characterisation and, ultimately, we can never forget it is Oldman we're looking at, not Winston.

It is a shame that the HFPA didn't look closely at Daniel Day-Lewis as couturier Reynolds Woodcock in Phantom Thread, or Jake Gyllenhaal in Stronger - or even Adam Sandler in The Meyerowitz Stories.

Oldman was who everyone expected to win and, this year, they needed to tone down on the surprises.

And so The Handmaid's Tale won over The Crown.

The first being a once-subversive-now-rather-mainstream story about a patriarchal dictatorship; the other an uncomfortable reminder of the benefits and dangers of a Constitutional Monarchy.

Let's not raise sand. Not today.

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In the comedy or musical category, it is the same old ridiculous dance every year. The HFPA chooses lighthearted movies and calls them comedies.

In the end, it works as a compensation prize for the second-best drama.

This year, the honour went to Lady Bird, a wonderful coming of age indie gem directed by Greta Gerwig. The movie deserved an award, or at least a nod, but why wasn't Gerwig among the best director nominees?

The omission even led to Natalie Portman announcing the award as "best male director", in a mocking tone.

Once again, the HFPA shoots itself in the foot in its quest for social justice.

Because awards are political, people who are left out end up feeling ostracised.

Because these ceremonies seem more like protests than celebrations, they become easy targets.

Maybe next year the HFPA could try and actually focus on the movies and the TV shows in question. Award quality, not creed.